Posted
by
kdawson
on Tuesday February 02, 2010 @05:19AM
from the stand-and-deliver dept.

An anonymous reader writes "It is now compulsory for people selected for a full body scan to take part, or they will not be allowed to fly from Heathrow or Manchester airports. There is no optional pat down. Also, a rule which meant that people under 18 were not allowed to participate in the body scanner trial has been overturned by the government. There is no mention of blurring out the genitals, however reports a few years back said X-ray backscatter devices aren't effective unless the genitals of people going through them are visible."

Annoying thing is sometimes life just gets in the way of making such decisions. I hadn't flown since 2001 until March last year taking all my trips to Europe via boat, bus and train. That is until my girlfriend got a cushy job in Spain necessitating monthly trips or no girlfriend. And much as I like the environment (and my privacy) not flying just wasn't a choice - and neither will it be, naked bodyscanners or not!

Annoying thing is sometimes life just gets in the way of making such decisions. I hadn't flown since 2001 until March last year taking all my trips to Europe via boat, bus and train.

That's fine when you start from the UK (or some other European or pseudo-European location) but getting to Europe by train from the US (or other "foreign" place) takes forever, and don't get me started about busses.

I want to go back to NY to take photos, I want to go see my family in Florida. I would love to go see NZ and Japan, but I refuse to fly now. I have had to make a choice, made a sacrifice, not happy about it but I refuse to be treated like a criminal just 'cos those in charge are trying to convince us of the existence of these so-called phantom terrorists!
More chance of slipping over and breaking your leg and dying in hospital, than dying in a terrorist attack! The terrorists have already won, we have lost our liberty and freedoms through fear and who helped the terrorists to win? Our wonderful all powerful governments, by slowly stripping away our rights, one by one, without most people even knowing or caring.
The terrorists got what they wanted, total fear of them from the general populace. The governments have curtailed our freedoms, just what all governments have wanted.
Sad times we live in now...

You are one of many. I would love to visit NY, but won't because of the same reasons. Many of my friends here have given up going to the States. Now Heathrow is off the list that now reduces substantially my number of destinations. Gatwick is still quite friendly with no scanners... for now.

The great thing about living in Europe is that there are more wonderful things than you can see in a lifetime, and all you have to do is jump in the car and drive there. No border controls, unless you live in the UK (where due to eBorders every single citizen needs permission to leave the country). Milan - Monaco: under 3 hrs drive. Barcelona - Bordeaux: around 5.5 hrs. Zurich - Munich: just over 3 hrs.

Sad times if you live under an oppressive regime, like China, States, or UK. Or a corrupt Eastern European country. There are plenty of quite easy going countries out there still.

Over-react much? No one can sanely claim that there are no terrorists. The point people are trying to make (with varying degrees of success) is that the terrorist threat is much smaller than we believe, and our counter measures are much harsher than warranted by the actual level of threat. The parents Simpson's "tiger proof rock" analogy was illustrating that our security measures largely exist to make us feel safe, over actually making us safer. This is fine, until the cost of maintaining the illusion of safety becomes to high, and individual rights suffer.

Yes, this scanning thing does improve security by a marginal level, but is that increase worth the costs? Car accidents kill more people than terrorism over just about any time frame. Tigers also (well attacks by animals) probably also kill more people than terrorism. Terrorism is a minor threat, in the grand scheme of things. Yes, we should be protected, by only proportional to the level of actual threat.

Remember, this scanning technology wouldn't have even stopped the 9/11 hijackers (who merely used pointy things to cause a large level of destruction and terror). Terrorists are not idiots, they are aware of the technology and techniques we use to stop them, and are capable of finding ways to circumvent our best efforts. They always will have this ability, being human and just as smart as we are. In the long run we hurt ourselves more than we hinder terrorists.

This is what worries people.

I personally would rather live in a land with a marginal threat of terrorist attack, and a maximal amount of freedom, than one with maximal safety and a minimum of freedom.

If these scanners were universally deployed, and all travelers forced to use them, I would be curious at the actual increase in safety we would enjoy. At the cost of every traveler being, in essence, sti strip p searched under the presumption of guilt. I have a feeling it would be marginal at best, at a very high cost to civil liberties.

Making explosives is just not hard for a dedicated person with basic reading comprehension and math skills. Your best bet is to ban education and close libraries, and well, the internet is right out.

The total lack of things blowing up all around us, combined with the relative ease by which an adversary could do so, tends to poke a giant fucking whole in the theory that specific measures to protect against all these people who aren't blowing anything up.

Its not about the right to blow stuff up. Its about the right to be secure in your person and have a little privacy. This invasion is unjustified. If i thought there was even a small chance that a full on "finger in the ass" cavity search meant the difference between me landing safely and dieing ina fireball, I would assume the position without a second thought. No machine needed.

I simply don't buy it. I don't care if this "feels" less invasive. Its still my privacy going away, for what I see as no benefit to anyone, not even myself as a flyer.

All I see is my privacy being taken away and my tax dollars being wasted to do it for some authoritarian wet dream.

This fact is what makes the "security" that we do have all the more frustrating. Anyone that is semi-intelligent, and actually desires to, can circumvent almost all the security we have in place.

Meanwhile we all suffer by losing our privacy, wasting our time, and not being much more secure.

While this isn't directly related to airport security, the point is the same. I went to a government building yesterday, where they have security guards and a metal detector to get in. I put my keys and cell phone in the tray and walk through the scanner, at which point the guard at the trays tells me that I can't bring in my keychain sized (mini) swiss army knife....the one with the &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbspSo I can't bring in my tiny knife because he saw it, but I could have brought in up to about 5 handguns that I had hidden inside the books that were in my backpack. Way to go "security"

The sad part is that nearly every time I'm forced to deal with this garbage, I begin wishing that someone would actually breach security just to show people how insecure it actually is:(

Actually, one of the changes since 9/11 thats been mentioned by a number of experts is, this has been done already BY THE 9/11 HIJACKERS.

On 9/11 19 guys with boxcutters hijacked 4 planes. 1 person on each "team" had to be a pilot to fly the plane. That leaves 3-4 people per team to control an entire cabin full of full grown adults. How did they do it?

Certainly nobody wants to get sliced and maybe killed by a guy with a boxcutter. However, it takes more than that to hijack a plane. It takes one other ingredient...it takes the vast majority of passengers believing in a relatively bloodless outcome. Generally either planes got blown up, or hijacked, downed, and eventually a rescue or hostage exchange.

There was no reason for anyone to resist at all, since everyone believed this would all be sorted out and everyone was going home. By the time the first 3 planes were downed, the ploy had already ceased to work on the 4th plane. The passengers proved the new security model. This particular threat was eliminated and demonstrated to be eliminated when that plane crashed.

Now as to the point about explosives. I doubt this can be done. Adding weight to reinforce the plane will also help contain anything like an explosion. A good old fashioned firebomb should still do a pretty good job. I have seen pictures of IRA firebombs (so thats going back a few years) that ran off 2 AAA batteries, and the whole device was little more than 1 AAA battery square in flat area. It would be trivial to hide any number of ways... and thats hardly state of the art. (when was the last IRA firebombing?)

However, I believe that crash actually helps make your point. Let's expand the time line from your article to the present. We now have about 130,000 people dead in the USA from car crashes and 50 from airline crashes. There were some smaller crashes (the global list of all crashes is here http://www.planecrashinfo.com/ [planecrashinfo.com] but it doesn't change the point. The ratio is truly stunning.

How many people have died thanks to terrorist incidents on aircraft in the last decade? How many people hove flown in aircraft? Divide the first number by the second to get the risk and you'll see it's a very small number indeed.

Yep, they try to spread terror through random(ish) acts of violence that sometimes result in deaths. They are not simply trying to kill everyone who doesn't follow their particular brand of imaginary friend. Well, not yet anyway!

The best way to fight it is to not be afraid. Sure there are risks involved in flying (and anything else they target), but the extra risk directly attributable to the erstwhile terrorists is actually pretty small. The problem is that the media (TV and paper news) seems to be on their side and loves nothing more than going into Headless Chicken Mode, running around screaming "Something Must Be Done" and "Won't Somebody Think Of The Children" which amplifies and spreads the fear, and of course sells!

How about a world-wide go-slow on terrorist event coverage?
Sure, let us know when shit happens but for the love of everyone's gods, cut the crap "How does it feel" style reporting! We all know it's gotta blow goats to be blown up, lose loved ones, etc, and it really doesn't do anything useful in reporting events, it just spreads fear!

I largely agree with you, a fear of nakedness can never be an excuse for less security.

Why not? Why should the handful of people who set up security measures be allowed to tell everyone else what a sufficient level of decency & dignity is for them? Being able to tell someone when they're allowed to be dressed or not is extremely personal, and more-or-less the last hurdle to cover before you as-good-as own them.

X2with it becoming more and more obvious that doctors and nurses in operating rooms can't remain professional and discreet, why does anyone expect a $7 an hour security guard will? You do know there will be pictures showing up on some website at some point. Probably similar to peopleatwalmart.com. But instead of some overweight person grazing in the candy aisle wearing a leopard print, it will be pasty anatomically correct and higly detailed people.

If we have learned anything since 9/11, it only took 3 planes to crash before the passengers are willing to take on any potential security threat. Any incidents since then have been thwarted, not by the stupendously effective (ha!) security but by the other passengers will to live. There is zero need for the scanners.

The "random selection" is not very random. It is highly biased by the minimum wage security guards.

I am white but have an Asian (Islamic) last name. Out of 12 trips in the past six years I have been picked out for a random pat-down 11 times. I assume this is because white people who convert to Islam are the most likely to be radicalised in the eyes of the security people. I was born with that name.

A large part of why people feel threatened by Muslims is just that they happen to be an easily identifiable foreign group. A security system based on racial profiling is a security system with a back door.

Oddly, the UK government did not lose its senses during the IRA attacks the way it has now.

And they are far better then any foreign beaches. No burning sand to scorch your feet on, you do not have to actually enter the sea to be soaked to the bone and free condoms float by whenever you need one!

No, you are not the only one. Fewer and fewer people are flying and it isn't just the financial crisis. I'm lucky enough to live in Germany with its 300Km/h trains, which for journeys of 3-4 hours is now offering real competition. Flying itself can be faster but if you add-on weather uncertainties and all the queuing/waiting for security scans as well as the issues over lost baggage - I'ld just rather take the train.

Unfortunately the UK is an island so going to most places is more difficult (but Paris and Brussels remain quite reachable).

[Trains...] Unfortunately the UK is an island so going to most places is more difficult (but Paris and Brussels remain quite reachable).

Brussels-London is just under two hours, Paris-London is just over two hours. Unfortunately, if you're coming from Germany it's probably cheaper to fly, but perhaps that will change once DB start running services through the Channel Tunnel later this year and introduce some competition. I'd like to see some sleeper trains extended to London, and some direct services to Germany (e.g. Koeln).

I'm travelling from London to Leipzig in May. Last year I left home at 3:30 to get to the airport to fly with a budget airline to Berlin, then took the train to Leipzig. I was so tired I fell asleep before take-off and woke up on landing. I arrived in Leipzig at about 13:30. This costs about £80 if booked now.

This year, I'm considering taking the train. I can leave work early in the afternoon, take the train to Paris, then take a train to somewhere in Germany (there's a couple of possibilities) and a sleeper train to Leipzig, arriving at about 7am. This costs about £130.

The final option is to fly with Lufthansa from London City (8:05) to Leipzig (12:30), with a connection at Munich, for £150.

Interestingly, authorities of many countries were already contemplating the use of these machines, but they have been succesfully opposed in most cases by privacy advocates and sensible politicians. Then, some guy with a half baked explosive just happens to slip through security on a flight to the US, and suddenly all proposals for full body scans sail through with no opposition whatsoever. Coincidence? Perhaps... but if it turns out to be more than just that, I will not be surprised at all.

London has five airports: Heathrow (west), Gatwick (south), Stansted (north-east), Luton (north) and City (central). Heathrow is the biggest airport (it has more international flights than any other airport, or something like that) but the others are all busy international airports.

You have a.de website -- if you're coming to London from Germany you'd probably fly to Gatwick, Stansted or Luton, assuming you choose a budget airline.

If you're flush enough, City airport is awesome for flying around Europe. It's primarily designed for business travellers, and is notable being the only airport I've seen where you can get from the station platform to your plane seat in seven minutes. Last time my girlfriends and I flew to Berlin, I insisted we fly via City on a Lufthansa business and stumped up her ticket fare myself; in the end it only cost us about 30% more in ticket prices (half of which we got back by not having to buy the stupidly expensive trains tickets that run to the airports). The gf had never flown from City before, was astonished at the lack of queues, the *polite and friendly* security staff; we fly out of there at every opportunity now.

It's been a year since I last flew out of there so I dunno if the thermite-panted idiot has changed things much there, but City has always been a cut above hellpits like Heathrow. It doesn't have much in the way of long distance because the approach path limits the types of planes that can take off from there but I'd heartily recommend it to any traveller wanting less stress on their way out of London.

There are several alternative London airports. London City is in fact the best airport for London, it's within the city itself, Gatwick and Stansted are further out than Heathrow, but often quicker to pass through. They both have fairly good transport links to the city.

I live in South West London (Twickenham), well within the M25, and had cause to go to Stansted on Sunday. Firstly, I take a train from Twickenham to London Waterloo station (20 minutes). I'm now pretty much in the city centre, with easy access to most areas via the Underground. Next, the Underground to Liverpool Street station (20 minutes). Then I had expected to take the Stansted Express train to to Stansted (45 minutes). But wait, it's a Sunday and there is engineering wor

Every single spoiled terrorist plot on flight since 9-11 has been stopped by pre-9-11 technique: lock on cockpit door, vigilant passenger, and "you-can't-fix-stupid" terrorist. Yet we are still investing millions of tax $$ in these supposed magic tech that not only haven't been prove to work (any plot stopped at the gate?) and increasing violates our civil right.

There is no logic here besides some lobbyist wants our government to spend $ on their product.

Also, a rule which meant that people under 18 were not allowed to participate in the body scanner trial has been overturned by the government. There is no mention of blurring out the genitals, however reports a few years back said X-ray backscatter devices aren't effective unless the genitals of people going through them are visible.

Yeahh... That's probably complete bullshit. I can just see British parents dragging their children through scanners that take pictures of their genitals.

If it is true, I see a precipitous drop in air travel in that country. Screwing with adults and their privacy is one thing, photographing naked children is some next level shit to put it bluntly.

You had nothing to hide. Privacy didn't affect you.Until some goon started to look at your balls when you board a plane... lol.

Sorry everybody, but I find it more disturbing that my every move is recorded and stored than that some person checks my genitals. The genitals are pretty much the same for everybody - my travels, my bank account, my posts online, my phone conversations - those are things that make me unique. Those matter far more.

Sorry everybody, but I find it more disturbing that my every move is recorded and stored than that some person checks my genitals. The genitals are pretty much the same for everybody - my travels, my bank account, my posts online, my phone conversations - those are things that make me unique. Those matter far more.

Those matter for your security. Having parts of your body covered preserve your privacy. The two are different. I doubt you'd enjoy having a webcam in your bathroom, even though what you do in there is about the same as what millions of others do in their bathrooms. That would invade your privacy, even though it would hardly affect your security. Both are important.

I suppose your point was that if the scanners are there for security, which you value more than genital privacy. Funny thing is, they don't increase it measurably, and they decrease privacy.

Screwing with adults and their privacy is one thing, photographing naked children is some next level shit to put it bluntly.

Yeah, some guy in Australia, I believe, got sentenced to jail for pedophilia because he had pornographic pictures of cartoon characters, but it's OK for government employed perverts to be ogling our kids in the name of "safety". Top grade job UK government, fucking A+.

Two things. Firstly, you've missed the point. This could well be for the reason that most of the general public miss the point: Media hype. This guy has been charged for possession of cartoon images of indecent acts involving children. He has been made example of because previously he had been convicted of possession of indecent images of actual children. This is all freely available information, much of it posted on/.

Secondly, no I absolutely will not be a test case. Firstly, images of cartoon characters having sex are puerile and daft to me, not sexually alluring. If I want that kind of humour, I'll check out some lolcats. This makes me someone who is not the target of this law, so prosecuting me for contravening it is at best moot and achieves nothing.Secondly, I'm already involved in issues of child protection in a professional manner. My interest here is to see sane laws which will actually protect children put in place, and idiotic laws repealed. This law is idiotic, for the reason you've implied above: Images of cartoon characters are not images of real people (the allusion to such from your final statement) and as such nobody is harmed by their (cartoon images) creation. However, the guy in Australia has a proven sexual interest in minors. He has already been convicted of such. The press coverage is to illustrate that the law protects children; A loose correlation in this case, but then again that's all the media need to trumpet it from the mountain tops. Note that I didn't say that I agree with the law in my original post, just recounted the facts from the story. I also didn't say that I agreed with the conviction based upon possession of images of non-persons. The difficulty is that there is a correlation between the evidence of both cases: Both involve depictions of a sexual nature which have been deemed illegal by the AUS government. Right now, they did the right thing convicting him. If they want to change that, they can vote on it and get it repealed.

Both sides of this arguments have entered Ridiculousland a long time ago.

If we assume that these body scanners actually help in preventing terrorist attacks on airplanes, it's silly to exclude children. Pictures of naked kids are only a problem if there's a reasonable possibility that they will end up in the wrong hands. Also, I doubt these scans have any erotic effect on even the most desperate pedophile except for those with some freaky scanner fetish.

Surely you don't think x-rays of children in hospitals should be banned? Or pictures of naked kids for medical purposes in files of pediatricians?

But the other side of the argument is the one making that assumption, that these body scanners will do any good in preventing terrorism. Sure, they may help a bit to prevent all sorts of smuggling and they will prevent people from bringing most weaponry on board. But what's to stop me from implanting some C4, or putting a balloon of liquid explosive in my bladder? Does that mean we'll start x-raying everyone next? Fine, I'll have the bone marrow in my legs replaced with high explosive, don't need it where I'm going anyway, right?

Terrorists will always find a way to get explosives on planes if they feel they need to. The only thing we can do is remove their reasons for wanting to do so in the first place.

"Pictures of naked kids are only a problem if there's a reasonable possibility that they will end up in the wrong hands""Surely you don't think x-rays of children in hospitals should be banned? Or pictures of naked kids for medical purposes in files of pediatricians?"

Did you really just equate My child's DOCTOR with some TSA (or what ever they call them in England) screener?Are you ok with the Greeter at the entrance to Wall-Mart seeing your child naked?How about the taxi driver?Clearly, for this thing to work, they need to see your genitals.Why then don't they have a strip search?Quick, effective, cheap, and doesn't expose you to an x-ray. what could be better?and it's not like "the wrong people" are going to see you naked...

these scanners are terrorism.remember when it was pleasant to fly?never again citizen.

Terrorists will always find a way to get explosives on planes if they feel they need to

True, and actually, if someone shoves a C4 capsule up their ass, this stupid machines won't detect it. Hell, they can even swallow a complete explosive device and they can't do shit. So, why all the trouble, all the privacy violation? How many terrorist attacks have actually happened against aircrafts? More people die on the road or in aircraft accidents than on terrorist attacks. All this "air security" is complete bullshit, and people are "fine if we're secure". Come on! Two hours to board an stupid airplane is fine? Naked pictures of your child is fine?

What I find more intriguing is the real reason behind all of this crap. Distract people from real problems? Collapse the air transportation system? Mess with our minds? Totalitarian control?

How many terrorist attacks have happened against planes? Well, depends how far you go back. You see, all the security is nothing new and BEFORE they were put in place, attacks happened far more often. That an entire generation has grown up without constant hijackings, that says something.

Why is it worse for kids to be forced through this scanner than it would be for adults? I'm not saying it's a good thing, on the contrary, but I fail to see the "next level shit" distinction in case of children.
But then, I remember a time when such pictures would hardly draw any comment, and could commonly be seen in family photo albums. That was before we were somehow conditioned to believe that we were dealing with a lot more than just the handful of sick deviants that is actually out there, and before

Back in they day before the Wave of Pedo Fear, actual nekkid babbies running about the house were pretty common. Of course, that was before we discovered that genital representation has a huge blast radius and turns all nearby adults into baby boffers, just as bare ankles uncontrollably arouse men.

I'd say there's a bit of a difference between kids running around naked at home or in the garden than having pictures of them all over teh intarwebs. The latter will happen, given the grade of people employed as airport security.

That's not the choice. The choice is a "quick" scan of their kids genitals and a 0.000001% chance of flying with terrorists, or no scan and a 0.00001% chance of flying with terrorists. It's really a no-brainer.

Seriously, we've never had genital scanners before and airplanes have been remarkably safe. In 2001, including all the 9/11 casualties both on the planes and on the ground and also the unrelated AA 587 crash, the rate was one death per 250 million passenger-miles.

You do realize that you can see beads of sweat on these pictures right? They are a little more detailed than what you see on the media releases.Also if we had these for 9/11 do you think it would have stopped it? Let's see what did they have to threaten the passengers:1. Box cutters: sure a body scanner would have picked this up but so does a metal detector.2. Vague threat of bomb onboard: yep body scanner would have done nothing for it. Maybe the guy cleaning the plane is one of the cell?

Why isn't "a quick, less-intrusive scan and other, less-indecent security measures" an option? It's not that hard to secure a plane without basically taking nude pictures of people. Place an armed guard or two on every plane (and create some jobs doing so, yay!), use conventional scanners to ensure people don't bring along explosives, and enable the pilot to seal the cockpit from the inside so that in case of an extremely unlikely, but possible terrorist take-over he can still land safely.

Actually, after 9/11, I'm not even sure if the armed guards would be necessary. 9/11 "worked" because people thought that cooperation with the hijackers would allow them to make it out alive. Now, things have changed - I'm pretty sure the passengers of a plane won't just sit by and wait until they crash into the Pentagon in case of another hijack.

Better yet, as you are a morbidly obese male and as the X-rays from this device are designed to reflect from human skin, you can easily hide any contraband, smuggled pets, bomb belts or illegal aliens within your rolls of flab and they will be completely undetectable by the device!

This is what scares me. Will they require us to lift our fat so they can rifle through our folds? What about large breast? I was humiliated enough as a chubby child. Being forced to jiggle my fat in a body scanner will make me snap. A very hostile fat man will ground all flights for a week.

It also needs to be obvious if the person viewing the screen is any of the following:1) Pleasuring themselves2) Oogling the pictures3) Asleap4) Taking pictures of the screen5) Making inappropriate jokes about anatomy.

Any of the above should be grounds for immediate termination. 1, 2, 4, and 5 should be grounds for immediate jail time and a permanent entry in the sex offender registry.

No, the government has won - it just so happens they have the same aims as the terrorists so they've co-opted them as a useful smokescreen.

They're saying they have introduced this measure as a response to the Christmas underpants bomber, the truth is they were waiting for anything, any kind of attack no matter how small as an excuse to introduce these scanners. They already trialled them, they were always going to be introduced, Brown was just waiting for an excuse.

It's a similar tactic to having a public consultation to give the appearance of fairness, when they have already decided what they're going to do anyway. Yes I'm angry.

If getting me angry is a victory for the terrorists, then they must also consider firing a paintball gun at a warship to be a victory.
Most people in the UK aren't angry, they just don't care about it at all. And my voice, my opinion, my vote, means nothing and changes nothing. I don't think the terrorists are winning, but I do see their actions helping the govenment get the ubiquitous surveillance it wants.

Because the government wants power for power's sake and now that it's had a taste it wants complete control and nothing less will do. It is insane and is using the actions of an external force to rationalise its own insanity. I can't think of any other explanation.

If I was a local sheriff or whatever the British equivalent is, I would wonder over to Heathrow and hang out in the viewing room. As soon as a prepubescent child popped up on the screen, I would whip out my camera, gather evidence and then arrest the "viewer" or "viewers" for viewing kiddy porn. This is an extremely serious charge that effectively changes your life forever. Then I would let the courts deal with it. It would suck to be the worker(s) at Heathrow, but it seems it takes extreme action to wake people in Britain up.

If I was a local sheriff or whatever the British equivalent is, I would wonder over to Heathrow and hang out in the viewing room.

No you wouldn't. The viewing room will be the other side of security, and only authorised people will be allowed in there in the first place. Unless you're explicitly employed to deal with airport security, you won't be an authorised person.

I find it difficult to reconcile the summary's outrage at 'security theatre', with its outrage at 'naked' photos of children. If we are to use these devices, and assume (possibly a big assumption) that they can detect weapons then we must scan children, otherwise it really is security theatre. To exempt children would be to render the scanners truly useless. Am I happy with these scanners? No, but they've been in use for many years in other countries (like Russia) and they seem to be more effective at detecting suspicious devices than any other method, short of a pat down. However, I'm not sure why a pat down is not an acceptable alternative. Perhaps because security people are generally afraid of patting down peoples sensitive areas.

Hop on over to El Reg and take a look at this article. [theregister.co.uk] While not exactly the most official study done, this show has shown that explosive ingredients can indeed be smuggled onto a plane even when going through the scanners. I believe this does qualify this whole mess as "security theater" to me.

If the pictures in the linked articles are true (which is not certain), I find the scan a lot less intrusive than a pat down. I'd rather have someone see a vague picture of my junk than grab it and my ass, while breathing in my face. I can't imagine anyone finding these pictures sexy, or even identify me from them.

My concern is more about the effectiveness of these scans. Is it more theater, or do they really detect something that a metal detector wouldn't ? The example pictures are showing a gun, which doesn't seem that good to me.

When will this "War on privacy" end? Most likely only when and if people stand up to it. And they won't as they do not see it as a treath to whatever they have. I rather sit in a plane with a potential terrerist and riks to be blown to smithereens then people taking away my privacy rights because of some bullshit security.

The drive to the airport is still more dangerous then the flight itself and that includes being killed by terrerists.

When looking at it now, the stazi of Eastern Germany were boyscouts.

You should not fear anything but fear itself. But as long as the media is selling news as entertainment, we will be hearing about these outrages dangers that almost never happen. Man bites dog is news and this means that dog bites man isn't and won't be shown. That means that people do not get all the information they need to do some basic risk assesment.

Interesting that they would do this so soon after the German TV show that demonstrated a person on whom exactly this kind of scanner found things like headphones, ball-point pen, cell phone, and so on, but completely missed all the bomb components deliberately concealed on his body:

I posted this in a reply above, so feel free to mod me redundant if you wish. I have to stop the FUD spread, though, or we'll end up fighting a battle with the wrong facts.

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1) The scanner demonstrated is a body-heat scanner, picking up variations in infra-red radiation output from the body. The devices installed at Heathrow and Manchester are millimetre wave X-ray, measuring reflected x-rays from any item more dense than clothing.
2) When scanning properly, jackets are removed and placed through the baggage X-ray machine. The man has the containers in his jacket pockets. This would not be allowed.
3) The scan was done quickly, and is not representative of a full scan (remembering that this is not even the same scanner being used in the UK).

They say all of this in the video, and I posted a comment (which wasn't published) saying the same. The Reg was spreading FUD that day, and you bought it.

The article clearly states "The image generated by the body scanner cannot be stored or captured nor can security officers viewing the images recognise people."

and

"The equipment does not allow security staff to see passengers naked, she added."

And both of those statements are absolute, 100% bullshit.

First, when those machines were originally designed, it was a specific requirement that they be able to store a digital representation of the images for later offloading or transmission. It was part of the specification. To say that they can't do it is a complete fabrication. Granted... presumably they have the ability to turn this feature off... but that is very far removed from "cannot"!

And as far as not being able to "see passengers naked"? Give me an effin' break! The picture accompanying the BBC article clearly shows otherwise. They might be faint, but you can see the guy's scrotum and penis. And I have seen other pictures and videos taken using these scanners, and you can see whatever the hell you want.

I have come to expect bullshit from government, but such bald-faced and blatant lies take me by surprise.

So we are told that privacy is not compromised because the people viewing the images are in another room and cannot tell who they're looking at. Well, they're going to need *someone* to know who they're looking at, or else there's no bloody point in this system. Specifically, they need to be able to say "Bob, the feller in the machine has got a gun on his left calf". And Bob needs to be able to say "OK, I'm on it. Keep me updated with news from the other queues".

Well, if they can tell Bob that, they can also say, "Hey Bob, this one's got a tiny dick. And that sexy fucking bitch who just went through with the baby had the biggest fucking nipples you've ever seen". And Bob can reply "Alright, I'm pulling her over. I'll find her name and you Google her"

This system has no meaningful privacy protections. The protection that's most likely to be effective for any one of us, is going to be the large volumes of passengers they are dealing with, which reduces the time available for them to take a prurient interest in one particular passenger.

If you are Harrison Ford, or Miley Cirus, or some other celebrity, do you really think that the operator is NOT going to whip out a pocket camera and image the screen, and sell it to some of the low-life websites that exploit such things for cash? Or, what if he simply posts it on the internet? Of course not every operator will do that, but there's always a bad apple in every basket, somewhere.

How do you feel about these employees checkout out your wife and daughter's breasts and asses?

I have no problem with it. Just like I don't care when a doctor sees them. Being a doctor myself, I know that there's nothing "magical" that happens once you get your degree. We're still human, And you know what? You DO get used to seeing naked people, and it stops being a big deal.

Frankly if these machines mean I no longer have to take off my shoes and belt and watch, so much the better. Scan away.